Here’s a good song to practice your bar chords on: All Along The Watchtower. Many different artists have done versions of this song over the years. It’s a pretty cool jam tune, so if you’ve got a friend who plays guitar as well (or bass), why not rope them into a jam session, and you can trade off on the rhythm and practice your improvising?
The chords for All Along The Watchtower basically go A -- Bm -- A -- G, so the most challenging part is getting the rhythm right.
Any other songs you’ve always wanted to learn? Leave a comment below and let me know which ones they are!
This one is a very basic, very quick little lesson -- probably relevant only for the real beginners out there, but understanding which note is your root note in the chord is quite important.
In general, the root note is going to be the lowest note in your chord, in terms of pitch. Definitely this is the case in all of the open chords and bar chords. Later on, you’ll get into more advanced chords, and probably see some inversions and things…. but don’t worry about that for now!
The reason you need to know where the root note is, is so that you don’t strum anything lower than that note! If you’re constantly just strumming all six strings, your playing will sound muddy and not very precise, or even musical!
So once you’ve watched this video lesson, and you understand where the root notes on your chords are located, pay attention to that while you’re practicing. Take the time to think about it, and make sure you’re only strumming notes within each chord that are supposed to be there!
One of the most common questions that beginners ask me is “How to use a guitar tuner?”
So I thought I would make a quick lesson here on how to use a digital guitar tuner to tune your guitar.
Tuning your guitar is incredibly important. If the guitar isn’t in tune, you’re not going to want to play it, because it will sound terrible. It’s pretty much that simple. So if you’re just getting started, there’s nothing that’s more demoralizing than sounding terrible all the time, so that’s something you need to fix!
As a side note, if you’re really struggling to get your guitar properly in tune, and you already know how to use a guitar tuner, then there is a very good possibility that the intonation is out on your guitar. If so, I recommend checking out these guitar setup tips.
Thankfully, tuning your guitar only takes a few moments with an electronic guitar tuner, so sit back and learn what you can in the next 8 minutes!
You might also want to check out a related lesson that I did on How To Tune Your Guitar By Ear. Hopefully this lesson will clear up any questions on how to use a guitar tuner.
As you’ll see, I initially started this strumming lesson using G C and D chords. Which of course works fine, and is highly relevant for teaching the strum pattern, however then I realized just how much this strumming pattern is used in the blues, so the last part of the lesson is really just a demonstration of how you can use 7th chords and make that exact same strumming pattern sound great in the blues.
7th chords are probably among the most common chords you’ll find in the blues, so if you ever want to make a song a little more bluesy, try swapping the major chords for their 7th counterparts. For instance, E goes to E7.
So without further ado, let’s get into the lesson!
One of the most common questions that beginners ask me is “How to use a guitar tuner?”
